Hindu Temples Rise In Illinois

Pethi Velu had planned to return to his native town in southern India, armed with a degree in chemical engineering from an American university.

But success interfered with his plan.

En route to his degree, Velu, 38, started a college magazine subscription service that has grown into a $30 million-a-year business. Plans for a doctorate have been replaced by children and a home in Oak Brook.

In the late 1960s, thousands of Indians, most of them Hindus like Velu, immigrated to the United States in search of educations in technical and medical fields. An estimated 50,000 to 60,000, 85 percent of them Hindus, settled in Chicago and its suburbs.

Now almost two decades later, established as physicians and engineers, they have begun to sink roots. But they have found a significant part of their lives lacking: a house of worship.

``If they have a temple, they can be rooted here,`` said Pratap Bhavnani, managing editor of the 15,000-circulation India Tribune, an English-language weekly published in Chicago.

Unlike India, where rural towns of 2,000 people may have as many as five Hindu temples, such places of worship are scarce in the United States. But that has changed somewhat in recent years.

As Indians have established themselves in communities and reared families, a growing number of Hindus have banded together to build temples.

On a former farm north of Aurora, a ground-breaking ceremony is planned for one of those temples next month. The ornate $1 million building, based on a design by an architect in India and refined here to meet building codes, is to be built of brick covered with white mortar. It will be topped with four spired domes and three towers, the main tower over the entrance rising 75 feet. The intricate gods and religious symbols that will adorn temple walls will be sculpted by 18 artisans who will be brought from India.

In this religion--distinguished by its belief in an array of gods, in the spiritualism of all things animate and inanimate and in reincarnation--each temple is dedicated to a specific god. That dedication makes each temple a sort of sect of Hinduism.

The Aurora temple will be dedicated to Venkateswara, the ninth and present one of the 10 incarnations of Vishnu, one of three major deities worshiped by almost all Hindus. Until now, followers of the sect in the Midwest have had to go to Pittsburgh to worship in a Venkateswara temple.

The temple will be among only a dozen open or under construction in the country, but it won`t be the first in the Chicago area.

On a gravel road south of Int. Hwy. 55 near Lemont a 21,000-square-foot temple has been under construction since January.

``What took time for these temples to be built was that many (Hindus)

came in the early 1970s and it took a while for them to get organized in business circles,`` said Krishna Reddy, president of the Lemont temple.

``Also, many of them were thinking they wanted to go back to India, but when they changed their minds and decided to settle here, they started thinking about building a temple.

``We see this temple as our gift to this land, which has given us so much opportunity.``

Unlike the waves of Italians, Irish and Poles who preceded them, the Indians that immigrated to the Chicago area haven`t remained cohesive. They live in communities ranging from Northbrook to Downers Grove to Lansing.

But like the immigrants who came before, they have assimilated gradually into American society.

Upon entering the professional world here, many have substituted initials for their multisyllabic first names and shortened their surnames. In his hometown of Madras, Velu is known as Pethinaidu Veluchamy.

In Madras, Velu also would abide by some of the strict tenets of Hinduism that declare the right of all creatures to live. He would never eat meat. But these days, eating a hamburger or a steak no longer is a mortal sin.

But few have abandoned the main doctrines of Hinduism.

If the immigrants have tried to become a part of this society while retaining their identities, they are finding that the task is not always easy. The nine investors who donated the 20 acres for the Hindu temple in Aurora are finding their project under attack by Call to Righteousness, a group of fundamentalist ministers from the Aurora area.

``I think this is a cult, a false religion as judged by our Bible,`` said Rev. John Riggs, pastor of Union Congregational Church in North Aurora. ``When you go to the pluralism of America, they have the freedom to worship as they will. But I object to this as I object to anything anti-Christian, and this doesn`t promote the Christian religion.``